Posts tagged with “civil rights”
Misuse of Terrorism Act 2000 44(2)
I just watched the compelling documentary Taking Liberties, which prompted me to finally send my complaint to the IPCC, and finish off this draft.
I was travelling Oxford to Cambridge, and had missed my connection at Paddington Station, London. With insufficient money for a hotel, I decided to just sleep in the station and catch the first train back to Cambridge. It was a cold night, so I plugged my headphones into my iPod, switched it to Pseudopod, pulled my Warwick Atheists hoodie tight around me, and sat on a light for warmth. For the next hour or so, I moved between sitting on lights and sitting with my back to a lit sign on a stall, trying to get most warm and most comfortable. There were a few other people in the station — perhaps in similar circumstances, perhaps homeless and seeking shelter from the outside wind. After some time I was dosing and listening to Pseudopod still, when I was woken (about 01:45 am) by a couple of officers in uniform who informed me that they were conducting “random” stop-and-searches under new anti-terrorism regulations. They asked me why I was there, and various other circumstantial questions. They asked to look in my backpack (which contained clothes, university work, laptop, wires).
Legal use of Terrorism Act 2000 44(2)
In follow up to my previous post. So I complained to the IPCC. After a number of initially dismissive letters back and forth, I started to get some thoughtful responses.
UK stop and search powers are illegal
The Guardian reports:
The Strasbourg court ruled it was unlawful for police to use the powers, under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, to stop and search people without needing any grounds for suspicion.
The widely-drawn ruling said that not only the use of the counter-terror powers, but also the way they were authorised, were “neither sufficiently circumscribed, nor subject to adequate legal safeguards against abuse”.
Ed Brayton's new podcast
I was delighted yesterday to discover that Ed Brayton, who used to host one of my all-time favourite political podcasts, Declaring Independence Radio, has recently started hosting a new show: Culture Wars Radio.
Is that even legal?
Creeeeepy!
PGP public key
So the GCHQ and the NSA are apparently teaming up to do a whole lot of extremely legal warrantless mass surveillance.
I am not against spying or surveillance per se. Anyone who lives in the UK and says “if you’ve nothing to hide you’ve nothing to fear” doesn’t understand the purpose of judicial oversight and probably doesn’t speak arabic. I believe in judicial oversight. An amoral-nerd-handler is not a judge. And political bias, false-positives and chilling self-censorship are the only outcomes of the GCHQ program I can see on the horizon.
So, if you’re emailing me, please feel free to encrypt your message with my PGP public key.
I’m currently running GPGtools, which is a very user-friendly free implementation of PGP and interfaces nicely with Mac OS and Mail.app for Mac OS in particular.